I do not know whether others would agree but I think debian is a very difficult operating system to set up. I recently purchased the new sarge distribution from the debian shop and have spent about 8 hours trying to set things up. I still have no sound and I will have to recompile the kernel to get the drivers for my card.

Did you install with the 2.6 kernel (i.e. type kernel26 when starting install)? As I found sound very easy to set up with this, I just got the alsa packages and typed 'alsaconf' and this set up my sound card.

Last week I tried Debian ( from a cover disk ). After four complete installs it just would not accept config settings for the monitor / graphics card. I have a CTX monitor with matrox millenium G400 graphics card. The only difference to normal is that I pass the monitor through a KVM switch. On this system I have run Win98SE , Suse 8.0 , Smoothwall and Ubuntu. I tried Fedora Core 4 but it insisted that the Mobo did not support the larger size of hd I was using, 6 GB by the way. I tried using each of the 3 levels offered during the install but when it finally started all that was on offer was 800x600 and 600x460. I'm no linux newbie but whatever I tried Debian overrode it and reverted to 800x600. I tried Ubuntu after failing with FC4 and it installed first time with NO problems at all. I only took it off as I found it too simplistic in its ways. Out of interest I'm only looking for a change as at present I run SusSE 9.1 & 8.0 but I don't like the way SuSE is going since the takeover by Novell.

I have dreamed of having Gnu/Linux as the default operating system, and now, because of the improved installer and the knowledge gained from 6 or 7 years of faffing around ineffectually, I have a Debian install that was not done by my fellow luggers but only this dullard 'isself Seriously once the base system is installed it is a synch to upgrade the kernel, from 2.4 to 2.6> and to get my Nvidia card to work.

Nelz has left a hard furrow to plough, as far as compiling CD's and DVD's, for M-Saunders esq

After about 8 years of using redhat/fedora, I fancied a wee change....
Had tried Debian once before, but couldn't get X configured properly (funnily enough using a CTX monitor).
Tried Debian from this months DVD, and well its .... perfect!
No install difficulties, no turning back now, Im hooked!!!
(Will see how long, as I go to configure my soundcard....)